Nouchi City

Just two years from now, the gallery opened its space to the public with an exhibition of artworks from the collaboration between Frederic Bruly Bouabré, a tutelary character in Côte d’Ivoire, and Aboudia, a young Ivorian artist. Today Aboudia’s work has caught the attention of collectors and curators all around the world, fascinated by the energy released by his gestures, a flow out of control the canvas struggles to contain.

Those snapshots scenes are the very essence of the urban life in Abidjan’s suburbs. From here comes the «Nouchi» identity which is often associated to Aboudia’s works: a mix taking its origin in the streets of Abidjan, cultural melting-pot of populations coming from all regions of West Africa, a popular slang that constantly change and evolve. Its cheeky and tough-nut nature, melt with a puckish and incredibly inventive spirit, fascinates all the «gaous» flocking toward the city.

We can find this saturated atmosphere, transposed into actions and images, in Aboudia’s last series.

One of the walls is covered by a large installation, made of small-sized works carpeted of magazines pictures that are the swarming background of our environment. Some pictures of African statuettes and traditional scenes are highlighted. This background, both theoretical and material, is then invaded and covered by layers of colors, dashes of pencil or painting who carries those old figures into the eclectic hurly-burly of the «Nouchi City», the city where Aboudia lives.

A series of large paintings contains portraits, with Aboudia’s urgent way of drawing and painting, and reveals figures, some nervous, some smiley, some childish, some colored. This crowd is a mirror visitors can watch, and observe life scenes of the city.

At the center of the gallery emerges a precarious construction, reflection of a resourcefulness everyday-life. This habitation is full of usual objects, which everybody can use, and the reference to the energy of street sellers and merchants takes us into simple dreams of an urban generation.

Aboudia takes his “Nouchi City” with him everywhere, also in Europe and in the USA. With only thirty years old, he is a globalized artist at the image of his multicultural city, and even if his work grows with those different influences, the “Nouchi” spirit always remains.

[1] Nouchi is a slang born in Abidjan in the eighties and spoken in Côte d’Ivoire and in West Africa.